


Social Media 101

by epeeblade



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Fanart, Fluff, Humor, M/M, MI6 and social media don't mix, all in a good cause, au after skyfall, match making, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25415209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epeeblade/pseuds/epeeblade
Summary: When M asks Q to take over the official MI6 social media accounts, things don't go exactly as planned.
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 22
Kudos: 170
Collections: 007 Fest Fancreations





	Social Media 101

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fic showed up in my head as a response to the social media class I'm taking right now. It's the only thing making that class bearable.
> 
> Thank you to Lapillus for the beta and the art you'll see in the fic. I'm glad she stepped up when I said "hey, want to create art of a 00 charity calendar?"

Q didn’t think he was in trouble. He couldn’t recall having blown up anything recently, and as far as he knew, 007 was on a mission and not lurking around Q Branch digging up old prototypes. He shuddered, remembering when Bond had found the backup exploding pen Q had pulled out for study.

They had nearly lost the entire wing.

Still, getting called in to M’s office wasn’t common, though it wasn’t entirely unusual; however, this time Q had no idea what this meeting was about. He nodded at Eve Moneypenny who waved him through.

“Sir? You wanted to see me?” Q poked his head in, ready to run out if this had all just been a terrible misunderstanding.

M looked up from his computer monitor. “Yes, yes, Quartermaster, come in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Q shut the door and waited. He didn’t quite know what to do with his hands; usually he had his laptop or tablet, or a fancy gadget to show off. But he hadn’t come prepared because he didn’t know what the devil M wanted with him.

“My superiors are rather displeased to find that MI6 is rather unpopular on the internet.” M waved at his monitor like he was casting a spell.

Q blinked. “Sir? The internet?”

“You know. That tweeter thing.”

“Are you referring to Twitter?” Q looked back to make sure no one was secretly filming him. This screamed practical joke.  
“Semantics. I’d like you to take point on this. With your skills, MI6 should have a better online reputation in no time.”

“With all due respect sir, I am a hacker, not a social media manager. Wouldn’t it be better to hire a PR person to do this?” Q knew what to do with his hands now, which was to put them behind his back and curl them into fists of rage.

“No budget for that. Besides, it's all computers. I'm sure you can figure it out.”

Rather than enrage his boss by taking time to explain how the internet worked, Q just said. “Yes, sir,” and left the office.

Moneypenny looked up as he exited. “That bad?”

“He wants me to improve MI6’s reputation on social media.”

She held herself very still. It took Q a moment to realize she was trying to stop herself from laughing. 

“It’s not funny, Eve. What do I know about any of that?”

“Q, do what you do best. Research.” And then she did start to giggle.

Q left without a rude gesture, which he thought very restrained of him.

***

In his secured email he received a packet with the username and passwords of the official MI6 Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. “What, no Tik Tock?” Q muttered and then shuddered at the thought.

There was something satisfying about seeing the official blue check mark next to each user name. But the responsibility of it all weighed on him. Q put out some tentative first posts and reviewed his following and follower lists. 

He knew when he was in over his head. But Eve had been right. Nobody did research better than Q. So he canceled all of his meetings for the day, shut himself in his office, and did a deep dive into white papers about using social media effectively. 

Three hours later, he emerged - hair mussed, glasses askew, tea cup empty - but he had a plan, outlined in post it notes all along one wall.

M might not like it, but well, he’s the one who left Q in charge.

***

The main problem was the need for constant content. There were only so many times Q could tweet “007 lost his gun again. You can thank him for your taxes going up.”

Instagram was the thorn in his side. The algorithm had him twitching, as Q used every trick in the book to try to hack it, short of literally hacking it. He had to keep posting, just to get some kind of traction on the network. 

It didn’t help that he’d been desperate. Q had taken to snapping photos of the oddest places at MI6 - nothing identifiable, some quite artistic shots of the break room, and the occasional snap of someone from behind. He had one of 007 that he’d taken before a honeypot mission, when Bond was all suited up in his best tux before infiltrating a society dinner. The camera had captured him at an angle, looking over his shoulder, but cutting the image off at his chin. Still the long lean lines of his body, the figure he cut in the tux, they were all visible.

It was Q’s favorite photo. 

Somehow, at 3 am in a caffeine deprived spur of the moment frustration at the impossibility of making any headway in Instagram...he posted it.

The next morning, he was happily ensconced in R and D, testing out his latest prototype, when Moneypenny came in holding her phone, a familiar grin on her face. “Q, you did it. You went viral.”

He blinked at her, his mind still half occupied with the problem of getting the gunpowder into the handle of the gun...Q reached out and took the offered phone. Of all things, the picture of 007 in the tux had taken off like a rocket. He paled. He wasn’t expected to reply to all 1,253 of these comments was he?

“Wait. You follow the official MI6 instagram account?”

She snatched the phone back. “Of course I do. And it’s found its way outside of Instagram as well. Twitter, Facebook. Someone set a music video with it as the background on Tik Tock.”

Q pulled out his own phone, which he’d silenced before venturing into R and D. It started with a ping with all of his notifications. He scrolled through some of the comments.

If that’s what it means to work for MI6, sign me up!

_I’d give him a licence to thrill, if you know what I mean._

_That man makes that tux look good. Who is he?_

_Yeah, is he your boyfriend, account admin?_

Q closed the app quickly. “This is terrible.”

“No, it’s exactly what you wanted. To improve MI6’s reputation online. With a photograph of Bond’s arse.”

“It’s not his arse,” Q sputtered. “It’s an artistic shot from behind.”

Eve raised a single eyebrow and he conceded her point.

“You should capitalize on this,” she said. “Perhaps do a double oh charity calendar, like the rugby teams.”

He went red at the thought. Q had spent far too much time enjoying those nude rugby player calendars, and he doubted the double ohs would volunteer for such a thing. “Don’t be daft,” he snapped. “Can you imagine Bond agreeing to that?”

“Actually, yeah, I could.”

Q pulled up his browser and frantically googled “what to do if you go viral.” 

“By the way, M wants to see you. At your earliest convenience.” She winked and disappeared from R and D with the same grace with which she entered.

Q tucked his phone back into his pocket. How had he gotten himself into this situation again? Right, his penchant for taking pictures of Bond when 007 wasn’t looking. Should probably stop doing that.

M, at least, seemed to be pleased when Q scuttled his way into his supervisor’s office shortly afterward. “Capital job, Q. We’ve made The Guardian, the Times and the Independent. Mostly positive press. Excellent work.”

“Thank you, sir?” Q still felt like he had walked into the middle of some sort of prank. 

“Now how are you going to follow it up?” M set those seriously frightening eyes Q’s way with such laser focus he felt like he was melting.

Q opened his mouth, and what came out was, “I thought we’d do a calendar of the double ohs for charity.”

***

Q could have counted the outburst down to the second. The moment Bond had returned from his mission in Brazil, he’d been sent a message to proceed down to Q-branch. Q had seen him conferring with R and had tried to duck out of the way before Bond stormed his way.

But he wasn’t fast enough.

“Q,” Bond thundered, “What exactly is going on here? R said this was my equipment for my next mission?” He held out a Speedo. It was a lovely powder blue, exactly the shade of Bond’s eyes, which of course they couldn’t show in the calendar. The eyes were blacked out to prevent recognition of the agents’ faces. 

Q swallowed. The idea of Bond wearing nothing but that Speedo was enough to make all the blood run south. He had to get it together. “If you’d actually read your emails then you’d know all about it.” Always a good start by putting Bond on his toes. The man had never warmed up to email. “All of the double ohs are participating in the semi-nude calendar, for charity.”

Bond glared at him for a moment, and then his lips turned up, like the canary that caught the cream. “There are only ten double ohs,” he said. “And twelve months. What are you going to do for the other two?”

And that was how Q found himself in Conference Room B, their impromptu photo studio, in nothing but his skivvies.

***

The calendar, of course, was a huge hit. Q had slammed his head against his desk and wondered how this whole social media situation could possibly get any more embarrassing.

And then 007 somehow managed to get himself a twitter account. A blue check verified twitter account no less.

“How did he accomplish that?” he complained to Moneypenny.

She kept tapping at her phone. “Perhaps he showed them his confidential MI6 ID card for verification.”

“You know that doesn’t exist.” They wouldn’t be secret agents if they had ID cards.

“Twitter doesn’t know that.”

He stopped pacing and turned to face her. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Checking my twitter feed. 007 has quite the following.”

Oh bother. Q ran back to his office. He needed to refine his social media strategy, especially now that Bond was in the mix, messing with his metrics. 

Of course, as soon as he logged into twitter and followed Bond, he saw that 007’s bio stated: “The arse that made MI6 famous.”

His tweets were filled with pithy jokes along those same lines. He’d gained two thousand followers overnight. Many of his replies were some variation of “are you single?”

For some reason, that enraged Q. Twitter was not a double oh dating service. He opened up the MI6 account DM window. “Are you trying to drive me mad?” he demanded of Bond.

A few minutes later his phone chimed with a response. “I’m just participating in your social media campaign. It was my arse that made you famous, after all.”

Q could hear the snideness in his voice, and Bond wasn’t even on the same continent. The truth was, Bond had a right to be angry. 

“I didn’t mean for it to go viral,” Q typed. “I was running out of content, and well, I had the photo and the rest is history.” And it was late at night, he was alone, worried about Bond and well, lonely.

“Why did you have that picture of me in the first place?” Bond pressed, the black words on the screen an indictment of Q’s feelings, feelings which could never be returned.

Q didn’t know how to explain that he’d taken the photo impulsively, but held on to it as a memento. So he didn’t respond. He closed twitter, and went back to work.

***

R charged into his office the next morning, a panicked look on her face. Q got to his feet, sure something had gone horribly wrong that he needed to fix.

“All of the double ohs have twitter accounts.”

Q felt the blood drain from his face. “Verified accounts?” R nodded. “What are they doing with them?”

“Sharing memes mostly.”

Q blinked. Maybe this wasn’t a complete disaster. “Thank you, R. I’ll take it from here.”

He pulled out his phone, and followed all of the double oh accounts with the MI6 account. Then Q sat down and started to read. After an hour or so, he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry.

The double ohs were rarely in the same room together. Having them do the calendar was apparently the most bonding time they ever got. They’d apparently taken this opportunity to tease the hell out of each other with memes modified to reference obscure missions.

Q recognized the one with the man reaching for a butterfly. The text beneath had been altered to say “Is this an exploding pen?”  
This continued on in that vein. Well, that didn’t seem too bad.

He changed his mind two days later when they started quote-tweeting various question tweets. Most of those tended to be harmless, i.e. what was the worst book you’ve read, wrong answers only, sorts of things.

And then someone got a hold of one that asked “What’s your idea of the perfect date?”

006 tweeted:  
Sneaking through a secret Russian base in Siberia, blowing the place to hell, and surviving in the cold until we found a cabin with only one bed.

007 responded:  
@006 that wasn’t a date, that was a mission.

006  
@007 Then how do you explain what happened afterward? “🍆"

The various fans the group had amassed - the ones Q tended to call the MI6 groupies - went absolutely mad. 

“Are 007 and 006 dating? Is that even allowed?”

“Omg 007 and 006 are dating!”

“007 and 006 dating? What does @officialMI6 have to say about this?”

And on and on it went. Q felt something sour settle in his stomach. He knew 007 and 006 were close, but… He found himself looking up the mission files, trying to find the mission 006 referenced. That was a good twenty years ago…

Why hadn’t he suspected? They kept it under wraps of course, but...Q went to bed that night with his phone clutched in his hand, scrolling through the speculation.

Until about 3 am - about 10 am in his time zone - Bond finally responded. 

007  
Me and 006 dating? Don’t be ridiculous.

006  
It’s called friends with benefits, children. Look it up.

004  
Besides, we all know who 007 really has his heart set on.

007  
Need I remind you @004, I know the location of at least 5 of your safehouses.

002  
Come on @007, it’s about time you told him. The lot of us are sick of you making moon eyes. If you don’t tell your boy, one of us will.

007  
@002 and to think, at one point you were my favorite.

Q closed his phone. His mind swirled with possibilities. Bond had a crush on someone - someone all the double ohs knew. Someone at work? Once again, here he was, making rash judgements about social media way too late at night. He should try to sleep.

There was plenty of time to worry about Bond in the morning.

***

The next day Q’s phone started to buzz around 3pm. He’d been busy - code to write, and agents to supply - so no time to check in on his social media accounts. At this point he’d scheduled all his posts, which meant he didn’t have to spend hours posting. However, he checked in every so often to respond to comments or join in a conversation.

When he checked, the MI6 account had a private message waiting.

“Sorry. This is weird. You don’t know me. Long time fan - love the 00 calendar. It’s just…@007 hasn’t tweeted his joke of the day. And he hasn’t tweeted anything after that conversation with 002 early this morning. He’d constantly tweeting his meals, and he never even shared a photo of his lunch.”

Q frowned at the message. “R,” he called. “Do we have a status report on 007?”

When she went to pull up the information, he got five more private messages, all fans worried about their favorite MI6 personality. It was actually almost heartwarming, the fact that Bond had all these strangers concerned about him.

“Q, I can’t reach him. He went radio silent around 5 am this morning.” R threw him a worried look.

Q slid in front of his computer. “Let’s fix that.”

Bond had been on a long term mission in Eastern Europe. It wasn’t supposed to be anything too dangerous - collecting intel on an oligarch. But Q knew how quickly circumstances could change.

It took him the rest of the afternoon to figure out what happened and send an extraction team.

He had to ignore the social media storm, despite the constant buzzing of his phone in his pocket. Q had a rescue to ensure.

When he finally got a chance to sit back and wipe the sweat off of his brow, his phone was eerily silent. He pulled it out. The private messages had all stopped after 006 had tweeted, “I have him.”

***

Q went down to medical the minute he heard Bond had arrived. He knew from experience Bond wouldn’t be there long. But he had to see for himself that 007 was okay.

He paused in the doorway, heart thumping to see Bond in the hospital bed, scowling at the nurses. His famous charm tended to disappear when he was in pain. 

Bond looked up and spotted Q. “Just the man I wanted to see.” He winced as he spoke.

“Oh?” Q entered the room proper.

“I need a clone of my phone. I want to thank my twitter followers before M makes us all delete our accounts.”

Q blinked. He couldn’t be annoyed. Bond was right - Q had been alerted so quickly to the danger 007 was in because his followers had noticed his tweet habit.

On the other hand tweet habits were trackable, and that kind of thing was what got agents killed. 

“And of course, you’ll have to tweet your commentary on Medical food.” Q pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen. “There. Your fans have an official MI6 thankyou. All taken care of.”

“Thank you.”

Q fumbled putting his phone back in his pocket. He could have lost James, never told him how he felt, and if it hadn’t been for social media, they wouldn’t be standing here right now. Still, did he have the courage to say anything?

“That photo of you,” he said finally. “I liked the way you looked in it, so I kept it.”

“Q,” Bond held out a hand. “Get your arse over here.”

And that’s how they ended up kissing in Medical. Q stayed until the nurses made him leave, and then he snuck back in after lights out.

Perhaps this whole social media assignment hadn’t been that bad after all.

***

Eve entered M’s office with the paperwork for the day. She handed him the folder on top. “As you requested, sir. The statement given to the press regarding the official MI6 social media accounts.”

“Thank you, Moneypenny.” He opened the folder and flipped through it. “All of the accounts have now been deleted, correct?”

“Yes, sir. Although apparently 002 is quite distraught over it.” Eve still had her own account, nicely anonymous and not official at all. 

“I assume she will get over it.” M set the paper down on his desk. “And that our Quartermaster will be quite relieved to no longer have the added responsibility. Send this on over to the papers.”

“Of course, sir.” She paused in the doorway. Something about the expression on M’s face as he put the folder down. It was almost smug, the kind of thing you’d see after a job well done. “An interesting experiment, wasn’t it?”

“I suppose.” 

“You know, there isn’t any record of any of our superiors demanding a better social media presence.” And Eve would know. She organized all of the information that came into M’s office. “I’ve been wondering from the beginning where it all came from.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes one has to take an indirect approach to a problem.”

She smiled. “Well, thank you, sir. None of us could take the pining any longer.”

M barked out a laugh as she closed the door. Eve pulled out her phone and started to tweet.

end


End file.
